A Safari Through the Ages Pt I and II
by Aitrus5
Summary: Imagine touring equally different, equally wonderous Ages...


Safari Through the Ages Pt I and II   
  
The sunrise on Tomahna shown on Catherine's face and she woke with a yawn, rolling her tongue around in her mouth. Last night she'd been awake entirely too long and it showed. Yeesha waited for nothing, whether her parents needed sleep or not. Perhaps on an Age she had not yet dreamed of, they had a cure for teething babies?   
She rolled over and to her surprise, Atrus was not there. Usually he snored himself awake several times during the night, and was a very light sleeper, always tossing and turning. She'd long grown used to it, though it had a few times resulted in legendary fights in their past. ~Where was he?~ she wondered.   
She heaved herself out of bed and splashed cold water on her face from the basin, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Carefully re-braiding her hair, she padded silently over to Yeesha's crib, hoping to catch her daughter in a peaceful moment.   
She froze when she saw nothing but a stuffed sunner doll and rumpled sheets.   
Her heart re-started seconds later when she saw the note peeking out from under the doll.   
~Catherine, my love. Before you can calm yourself down enough to get angry with me, listen closely. I have a wonderful day planned for us. I've written a few new Ages recently that might interest you. Don't worry about Yeesha, as I've left her with Tamon. Take the spare environmental suit, put it on and decide on the Age you wish to visit from the choices you will find on my desk. Don't forget a linking book. And remember, save the blue book for last. I pray you enjoy your journey. -Atrus.   
One final note, I apologize in advance for the scare. I dearly hope I will not be sleeping on Rime tonight.   
She chuckled silently. ~Well, well, well. My, my, my.~ Just when she thought the day would be like any other. She did worry about Tamon and Yeesha together, the old D'ni occaisionally complained about things that weren't there...things like "Shouldn't that expedition to the surface be done by now?" He sometimes greeted rocks on the ground as if they were people and swore to everyone that he was secretly the inventor of the Art.Still, if Atrus trusted him...   
Catherine shrugged and nodded her head decisively. She deserved a day to herself. She pulled the heavy environmental suit out of the closet, upsetting several piles of blank books and stepped into the metal-shod boots. It was heavy, fitted with canvas and metal to protect her from any kind of Age she might encounter. She zipped and buckled herself in, checked her air supply, and fitted the helmet over her hair, tucking it into place. Oxygen flowed into the mask and she breathed deeply, pressurizing her body for the rigors ahead. Skintight gloves formed a hermatic seal around her hands, and she could grasp as easily as she could bare-skinned. If Atrus required her to wear the suit, there was no telling what lay ahead. Feeling like she weighed 100 pounds more, she snatched a linkng book back to Tomahna and clomped into the main study. She spotted the books on the desk right away.   
There were five. She studied the windows, each one swirling with possibilities. The right-most book, covered in blue, lay off to one side. There was no name on the cover, Atrus apparently did not want to give anything away.   
A small journal lay in front of the row of books, and she smiled inwardly. She never tired of reading his travels, his discoveries. With Atrus in her life, every day was more interesting than the last. She plucked it from the table and closed her eyes. At random, she pointed into the air.   
When she opened them again, her finger was pointing at the book second from the left. She checked the cover.   
"Ice Age." she read outloud. Not very original. But who was she to argue with a dream? She turned the dial that increased the heat flowing across her skin. Judging by the name, she was going to need it.   
She placed her palm across the glowing panel, and vanished across dimensions unknown to another world.   
  
  
It was cold.   
Deathly cold.   
She shivered even in her suit and turned up the heat by several degrees more, twisting the dial to it's maximum. The indicators on her arm readout indicated the temperature as barely enough to sustain life. She took her first look around, wondering what a breath of air this cold would do to her lungs.   
The first thing that struck her was that the sky was a uniform pale sea green, like algae lived in the clouds. It swirled and boiled before her eyes, a lingering storm sweeping from horizon to horizon. It was very dark and she wondered how the sun [or suns?] could even shine it's way through   
the dense clouds.   
She turned in a circle and furrowed her brow as she saw virtually   
nothing.   
Nothing but a vast sea of solid ice. The very Age was frozen solid. Cracks ripped through the ground, some tinier than a strand of hair, some wider than the entirety of Myst Island. A gigantic example ran past her about 20 feet to her north, and seemed to have no end, jagged edges forking off into the end of the world.   
Since she couldn't go north, she decided to go south.   
Catherine took a single step and launched herself up into the air with a cry of surprise.   
It took all her strength of will not to instantly empty the contents of her stomach. The clouds grew closer, swirling green and blue.   
She floated upwards about 25 feet and prayed thanks to the Maker as   
she slowly stopped and came down far from where she had stood.   
~Atrus, you've been playing with gravity again.~   
Once she'd calmed her heart, she continued her explorations, though there was seemingly little to see. This Age was featureless.   
There were no trees to speak of, no brush, nothing brown and green and growing. If life survived on this Age, it had to be tough indeed.   
She shivered even through her suit as a bitter wind chilled her to the very core.   
She walked for a time, lightly jumping over cracks and circling the   
bigger crevaces when she needed too.   
It was still dark, but the clouds dissipated finally, swirling away   
into space, leaving an eternally dusky sky. It was almost black. Thousands of stars winked into existence, more than Catherine had ever seen. One sparked brighter than any of the others, and she knew that this Age was far from the sun it orbited.   
She walked and eyed the sky, since there was nothing to see on the ground but ice. She tried to recognize any familliar constellations. It was a game she played on each Age she had ever visited.   
Then she walked some more, in a different direction, trying to spot   
any difference in the ground, any sign of a mountain, perhaps a tree in the distance.   
And she trudged onward, losing count of just how many damnable cracks she had leapt over.   
An hour later, just as she was about to throw up her hands and link back home, she saw the wall of mist.   
She blinked, rubbed the faceplate of her mask, and looked again.   
A small blanket of mist was just off to the left of her peripheral vision, and she jogged towards it without hesitation, iron boots digging into the ice.   
Plunging into it, her faceplate instantly fogged over and she wiped it away. She slowed her pace, not knowing what lay ahead.   
Her vision came back, and her lips drew back in a smile.   
Here, finally, was life.   
Catherine knelt just inside the mist wall and watched.   
A small army of creatures crowded along one side of a large lake that   
swirled with a black, slightly viscious substance that was almost certainly   
not water. They were small, about the length of her arm, yet very thick,   
with rolls of flesh covered in bushy dark brown fur.   
She watched in wonder as nearly 20 segmented pink worm-like creatures emerged from the lake. Huge unblinking eyes gaped and the tiny naked forms huddled closely to the larger creatures, burying themselves into the thick fur.   
Catherine thought at first the brown animals were limbless, then blinked in surprise as two small stick-like legs unfolded from the fur and one toddled upright like a child that was first learning to walk. Most were sleeping, yet a few had their large, black eyes open. They yawned,   
showing toothless mouths. Small, furry triangular ears poked up from the top of their heads, swiveling right and left.   
As she studied them, it came to her abruptly that she wasn't cold anymore.   
She checked her temperature gauge and noted that it was several degrees warmer inside the mist wall than outside.   
Curious.   
One of the brown, furry creatures teetered up on it's hind legs and began making a coughing sound, barking into the air. The small pink things   
fell off of it in droves and several began climbing mindlessly back up the legs of the larger creature.   
Catherine watched curiously, not daring to move.   
Abruptly, between the creatures legs, a large orifice opened between the folds and Catherine chuckled in amusement. No matter the Age, all creatures had at least one thing in common.   
Her chuckling stopped when ~fire~ spurted from the hole and the brown creature gave a bark and launched itself upwards with its legs.   
The pink things flew off as it took to the air and soared over the mist wall.   
Mouth open, she followed it until it was out of sight.   
The pink things shivered and crawled frantically until they came across another furry form and burrowed in.   
Above her, the clouds floated back into existence, making her think there was an ocean over her head.   
How could a creature spurt fire like that?   
She withdrew the journal from her pack, and opened it, flipping through her husband's ramblings until she came to a drawing of the creature she saw before her. Underneath it was the caption: Firebelly.   
She laughed quietly. Atrus named things as he saw them. He'd been no help in naming the boys or Yeesha.   
Across from the picture, there was a page of writing.   
  
~It never ceases to amaze me what life takes root in the Ages I write. I have deliberatly made this Age inhospitable by my admitedly limited D'ni standards, but I thought surely with a temperature colder than Rime and a poison atmospere would keep all but bacteria from forming.   
Once again, I am incorrect, as evidenced by the drawings I have made here.   
I have named these creatures Firebellies. Catherine would laugh as if I joked, but if she were here to see them herself, the name would seem very appropriate. They live by the ice shores of the poison lakes that dot the frozen landscape. The most fascinating thing about these creatures is their method of keeping warm. Even with their thick fur, they would soon perish. How do they do it?   
The answer is astonishing, yet rather simple. To avoid freezing, they keep fires burning inside their bodies. They eat ice, which forms nearly all of the surface of this Age. Their fuel is made of oxygen from the ice and, I believe, methane from the dense atmosphere. By squirting flame, they can make long leaps in the low gravity, which I discovered after being knocked senseless by an errant landing attempt.   
The smaller creatures I call Amphids. They sometimes crawl out of the lake and huddle by a handy firebelly for warmth, until the firebellies fly off and send them scattering. I have yet to discern their life under the lakes, but until I design diving equipment that can withstand the temperatures, it will have to remain a mystery.~   
She smiled as she read, delighting in the information. Life was indeed capable of anything.   
Catherine stood and watched quietly as several of the firebellies stood, shaking off their amphid sycophants. With a rumble, they launched themselves skyward. They blotted out the stars as they barked, leaping up to fifty feet away before fading away from her sight. The flash of flames from their bellies danced further and further until they were lost into the darkness.   
The mist wall disappeared, the heat source having vanished.   
"Time to leave." she said to herself. She looked once more up at the clouds and the stars, and across the frozen plains, commiting the Ice Age to memory for all time.   
She shivered in the cold once more, and brought out her linking book back to Tomahna, wondering what the next Age held for her. She hoped it was warm.   
  
More to Come.   
  
Catherine studied the dry, yellow leather of the cover of the next Age she had chosen. ~Corona Age~ she mouthed silently. ~Like a sun?~   
She opened the book carefully and was almost blinded by the linking window. Unnaturally bright light flooded from it, and only the   
descent of her hand onto the window prevented it from going further.   
  
  
The air was quiet but for whispery winds slipping quietly through   
the rock formations. A sudden, alien sound sent insects buzzing away,   
and Catherine faded into existence.   
The blistering heat, the sundering warmth immediately hit her full in the face. She dropped Atrus's journal and frantically pawed at the switch to let life-giving water flow through tubes in her suit.   
Sucking greedily on the water tube in her helmet, she took her first look around this new Age.   
Her first thought was that she was back on Everdunes. Rolling hills of sand larger than the great tree on Myst stretched away in all directions. To the north and west, great rock formations poked out of   
the sand, looking like giant letters of the alphabet, 'I's and half-moons of orange colored rock rose staggeringly high into the air. There was two strange difference between Everdunes and the Corona Age, however.   
One was that the sand was bleached white, as if all the color had   
long ago been scoured away. Her black environmental suit stood stark against the landscape.   
The other that she gaped at were the three suns above her head.   
One was gigantic and blue, seemingly taking up a quarter of the sky. Which itself shone almost perfectly black with just a hint of blue. This world had a thin atmosphere indeed.   
The other two stars were smaller and white, both a good length from each other, but it was impossible to tell which one was further away from the planet than the other.   
Catherine shook her head in wonder at the Maker's dreams. Even her own Ages paled in comparision to the forces at work here.   
She blinked back tears as the light blinded her even through her   
faceplate. She'd have to find shelter until nightfall.   
If there even is a nightfall...   
She stepped more tentatively this time around, remembering Atrus's   
likening for gravity flucuations. Her step was sound, if a bit heavy,   
and she started off, sinking lightly in the sand with each step.   
There were no signs of life once again as she headed toward the nearest tower of rock. She'd read Atrus's journal when she got to the rock, and more importantly, to the shade.   
Nothing but sand, rock, and three suns to keep her company.   
Trust Atrus to put her on a world where there was nothing to do   
but burn her skin and build sand castles. Although Anna would probably have clapped her hands in delight. She loved and respected Atrus's late grandmother dearly...and yet she'd always thought there was something wrong about a woman who didn't know how to swim.   
She sipped thirstily at her water tube.   
Two hours and twenty sips of water later, she had finally made it into the shade of the tower of rock. Looming over her head a good fifty feet, it made adequate shielding from the suns.   
Catherine sat and plucked the journal from her bag, opening it and skimming through various entries until she came to the start of the Corona Age.   
~I have named this Age, Corona. One look at the magnificent   
lights coming from the sky during the eclipse and the name embedded   
itself onto the leather cover of the book.   
This Age represents life in the desert I must admit I have taken some liberties to make it more interesting. Beginning with the-~   
Catherine looked up as a shadow fell over her head. Turning her   
head rapidly around, tensing her body, she looked for the source.   
There was none. The air was literally getting darker, as if the suns themselves were extinguishing slowly.   
Then she looked up.   
In awe, Catherine watched as a grey moon seemingly the size of the world itself rose from the horizon and slowly covered the blue star. It   
seemed to flare angrily at this thing that would dare to conceal it's brilliance. As night swept across the horizon, the other two white   
stars shone like beacons, each keeping the shadows from fully eclipsing the world. The temperature dropped considerably, according to her readouts.   
She wished with all her heart that she had a model of this Age   
so she could see how unbelievably complex the system was.   
Colors began to flare around the sides of the moon, as atomosphere   
and solar wind came together, and flashes of purple, green, and white light crackled together. From Catherine's vantage point, half of the   
sky became a living painting, like a linking window enlarged to the point of impossibility.   
Shimmering with intensity, the lights danced and frolicked across the moon's surface, framing it with a glow that was surreal in nature and beautiful in its intensity.   
She could only gasp and cry softly, murmuring "How beautiful...how beautiful..."   
She was snapped out of her reverie when the rock behind her shuddered.   
Jolted, she tore her gaze from the sky and vaulted back away from the rock, which now twisted around in the sand, loosening the grains around it. A rumble in the ground nearly knocked her from her feet.   
She heard a strange hissing noise and noticed at once a white   
gas coming from a hole in the very top of the tower of rock. It glowed fiery red in the dancing sky lights.   
She held the Tomahna book in one hand, not open. Not yet.   
On impluse, she ran as fast as she could go, iron-shod feet digging into the sand. When fifty feet had passed, she turned again to behold the rock.   
It was at least twenty feet higher. And now, she noted, the ground around it was shifting in a distinctive shape.   
Her brow furrowing in thought, she opened the journal quickly and   
thumbed through it.   
~Of all the wonderous creatures Anna taught me about while I lived in the Cleft, none interested me so as much as the ones I would never see, especially in the desert. The dolphin, energetic and playful as a child. The shark, majestic and deadly. And, of course, the whale.~   
"Oh no." she said outloud, looking up wide-eyed at the thundering rock rising further and further into the sky, which answered the roaring sound with a crackle of orange and violet.   
The huge, elongated head broke the surface with a low, booming cry. The rock-like breathing tube pulsed with each intake and exhale of breath. The color of sandstone, it's eyeless bulk slammed to the ground, toothy mouth opening slightly.   
Her knees quivered and the book dropped to the ground as the gigantic head twisted around in the sand, sending waves of the stuff towards her and she barely kept her feet. It roared, nearly shattering her eardrums through the suit and lifting her clear off the ground.   
An answering cry made her jerk her head around and she groaned   
when she saw another one of the things emerge from the sand. It was   
miles away, she saw, yet still seemed big enough to swallow one of the   
remaining suns.   
It had a different shaped breathing tube, she saw.   
She looked back at the nearest thing, and her heart started beating again when she noticed it gulping down a few stray rocks that   
had been lodged in its strange teeth. They almost looked like filters...   
"All right, so it can't eat me." she said to herself. "I'm still going to kill him."   
Catherine did not move from her spot and listened closely for an hour to the creatures sing a rather mournful and melancholy song that only the Maker knew the words too.   
Above, the moon moved further across the sky, uncovering a hint of the blue star. The multi-colored lights slowly faded away the more the moon revealed the biggest sun on this Age, and she waved gaily at the seemingly living lights as they departed. The heat intensified once more.   
"Until next we meet, wonderous souls." she whispered.   
She opened the journal once more and eyed it carefully before looking up. The creatures were already disappearing back into the endless sand. One of the breathing tubes descended below the surface   
and she felt the ground rumble as something moved under her and away.   
"Sand whales." she smirked at the ground. ~Oh, my husband, ever   
the imaginitive child.~   
One who was going to get quite a spanking the next time she saw him.   
If she made it that far. She still had two Ages to explore. And then the blue book.   
Catherine smiled suddenly, gazing across the barren landscape. She wouldn't have it any other way.   
With a rush of air, and a tingle in her body, she was gone.   
The linking book slid slowly beneath the sand.   
  
More to Come. 


End file.
